Interpretable ADC-based radiomics models for differentiating hepatocellular carcinoma and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to develop interpretable machine learning (ML) models using apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) radiomics to differentiate hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC).

METHODS

Radiomic features were extracted from ADC maps of 83 pathologically confirmed HCC and 46 pathologically confirmed ICC patients who underwent MRI examinations. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) method selected essential features for five ML models: logistic regression (LR), random forest (RF), gaussian naive bayes (GNB), support vector machine (SVM), and k-nearest neighbors (kNN). external validation was performed using 20 HCC and 20 ICC cases from the cancer imaging archive (TCIA) public database. Model performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, F1 score, calibration plots, and decision curve analysis (DCA). The best-performing model was interpreted using shapley additive explanations (SHAP).

RESULTS

LASSO selected eight features. The models achieved training AUROCs of 0.84-0.95 and internal validation AUROCs of 0.78-0.91. The LR model demonstrated superior performance (training AUROC: 0.95; internal validation AUROC: 0.91; external validation AUROC: 0.85). Moreover, calibration plots and DCA confirmed that this model exhibited the best calibration and clinical utility. SHAP identified wavelet-LLL-firstorder-RootMeanSquared as the most impactful feature.

CONCLUSIONS

The ADC-based LR model robustly differentiates HCC from ICC, with validated generalizability using public data, offering a promising non-invasive clinical tool.